Concept · ◇ Light

The Descent (Katabasis)

Katabasis · The Harrowing

coreattestedMesopotamian religionGreek mythologyGnosticismEgyptian religionChristianity

The journey into the land of the dead and back — the oldest and most widely retold plot in religion. A god, hero or savior goes down through gates or heavens, is stripped, tested or killed, and returns changed, carrying something the living could not otherwise possess. From Inanna on the hook to Persephone with the seed to the Savior breaking the toll-gates, every telling agrees on one law: the dark keeps a share of whatever it touches.

Reach92

Depth87

Influence83

Mystery84

✦Signature powerThe IdeaA pattern of thought that recurs across every age.

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Voices & connections

Figures bound to The Descent (Katabasis), family and rivals within the myth, and the thinkers and writers who shaped how we know them.

Inannaassociated with Ereshkigalassociated with Persephoneassociated with Hadesassociated with Jesus of Nazarethassociated with Gilgameshassociated with

Relics & objects

Sacred and cursed things that belong to the world of The Descent (Katabasis).

The Divine SparkSacred The Apple of DiscordCursed Pandora's JarCursed The Forbidden FruitCursed The Holy GrailSacred

Read the story

Illustrated chapters where The Descent (Katabasis) appears. Start reading in a click.

Illustrated storyGilgamesh, Who Saw the DeepThe oldest epic on earth: a tyrant king is given a wild man for a friend, loses him to the one enemy no king can fight, and walks off the edge of the world to un-learn death. The Flood survivor tells him the truth, a snake steals the consolation prize, and he comes home to the wall of Uruk with empty hands and the story itself — which turned out to be the immortality.Begin reading →Illustrated storyPersephone, the Stolen SpringA girl picks a flower grown as a trap, and the earth opens. Hades takes her down to be Queen of the Dead; her mother Demeter stops the world until Olympus negotiates; and one swallowed pomegranate seed writes the terms of the seasons. The Greek descent myth — and the charter of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the ancient world’s best-kept promise about death.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Death of OsirisThe good king is tricked into a coffin measured to his own body, sealed in at a banquet by his brother Set, and carved into fourteen pieces scattered the length of the Nile. Isis, the great enchantress, finds thirteen of them and rebuilds her husband with words of power. He does not come back to life; he becomes the reason there is life after it — first mummy, judge of the dead, father of his own avenger.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Descent of InannaThe oldest descent story ever written, four thousand years old: Inanna, Queen of Heaven, turns her ear to the Great Below and walks through the seven gates of the dead. At each gate a garment of her power is stripped away, until she stands naked before her sister Ereshkigal — and is hung on a hook. Her rescue costs a head for a head, and her eye falls on the consort who did not mourn her.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Sleeper in ClayThe Gnostic Genesis: the Archons shape Adam as a trap for the light, the blind god breathes his stolen inheritance into the clay, and the copy stands up greater than its makers. The garden, the tree, the serpent who tells the truth — the oldest story in the world, told from the point of view of the spark.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Descent of the SaviorThe Savior’s journey told in full: sent by the Ineffable Light, he puts on the form of each heaven he passes so that no warden knows him, breaks the lion-faced power of Authades, strips the Archons of their stolen radiance, and opens — permanently — a road through the kingdom of the blind god. The epic of the way home.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Son Who TurnedSabaoth, son of the blind god, hears the voice of Wisdom rebuking his father — and believes it. The story of the only Archon who looked up: his defection, the war it started in the seven heavens, and the throne of glory he was given in the seventh, a power of light seated inside the kingdom of the dark.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Blind GodThe story of Yaldabaoth, told from inside the dark. Born of Sophia’s fallen light mingled with Chaos, he wakes alone, knowing nothing of where he came from. He raises seven heavens and an army of Archons, declares himself the only god, and hears — once — a voice from above that he spends the rest of eternity trying to forget.Begin reading →